Henry Vilas wrote:There is a big difference under the law. Former felons can vote, but can never legally possess a firearm.

Well, to be accurate, some former felons can vote. It depends upon the state-- there are a couple of states that permanently bar felons from voting. And in some states restoration of voting rights depends upon a period of time or completion of some program. How would one verify which felons fall into the "restored" status and which haven't?

Never say never: pardoned felons can possess firearms.

And from a practical standpoint, there is a huge difference. The requirement to show ID to purchase a gun has minimal impact on the ability of felons to actually obtain guns. They can obtain them on the black market, through theft, through straw purchases. There's no such similar way to vote, although one might argue that voting using another person's names is somewhat analogous to a straw purchase of a firearm. But showing ID at the poll would certainly reduce the ease of doing that.

The GOP's true motivation behind voter ID is disenfranchising voters. Historically in the US, the more people who vote, the more likely a politician on the Left will get into office, but the Right would have you believe that's because of voter fraud, even though voter fraud is so rare that it's NEVER flipped a US election.

Henry Vilas wrote:There is a big difference under the law. Former felons can vote, but can never legally possess a firearm.

But your objection was that "voting is a constitutionally protected right." But it looks to me that you actually don't give much weight to your own argument in the final analysis. Correct?

Read the rest of the 15th Amendment. The right to vote for citizens can only be revoked for conviction of crimes or participation in a rebellion (think Civil War). It's up to the states if they want to revoke felons' voting rights. Some do, some don't. And the Supreme Court has previously ruled that the crime can't be just a misdemeanor. Citizens who live in U.S. terroritories or D.C. cannot even vote in presidential or congressional elections. But they could move to a state and do so.

The Supreme Court has also ruled that restrictions on firearms and on who can possess them are also constitutional.

On Friday morning, Judge Robert L. Wilkins looked out across the packed courtroom at the lawyer for Texas and suggested that the state’s voter ID law would force some people to travel more than 100 miles to get the documents required for a photo identification.

“How does that impact your argument?” asked Wilkins. “Isn’t that unduly burdensome?”...Much of the debate over the law has focused on the issue of exactly who would be affected by it. The burden is on Texas to convince the panel that the voter ID law is not discriminatory, and on Friday, Hughes, the state’s attorney, argued that there is no evidence, statistical or otherwise, that it is.

That argument, however, was received skeptically by one of the jurists, David S. Tatel, of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia.

Any appeal of the decision goes directly to the U.S. Supreme Court, which I expect will happen.